Vegetables!

This week's CSA box

I really miss my freedom of cooking. The hardest thing about my community experience here has been not being able to think, hey, this sounds good, I think I’ll make that for dinner! I only get to cook once a week, and some weeks not at all. I could cook on the weekends, but we don’t usually have house money to spend on ingredients, and my $100 stipend doesn’t go very far when it comes to groceries. I don’t mean to have a pity party, living on $100 a month is not the hardest thing I’ve ever done. At least I know that $100 will be there every month for the next 9 months. But I’m really struggling with my own personal lack of food sovereignty.  Especially after cooking for myself for the last 3 or 4 years.

My saving grace is my CSA box. The thing about cooking that is so fulfilling to me is the experimentation and creativity. Knowing that there will be a couple pounds of vegetables that aren’t claimed for meals, and that are often unusual vegetables that no one else is dying to cook, like tokyo turnips. These humble little roots have preserved my sanity for several weeks in a row now. I had never heard of them until they arrived in my box, but I’ve found several ways to cook them since then. I’m pretty sure that no one else in my house even knows what they are except maybe Maria, because I made her try some last week. She’s a good sport. I can also usually count on radishes and squash to sit neglected until I either eat them myself or use them in a dinner dish. And I love them for that.